The lower league loan rangers are struggling for first-team experience, but in years gone by they would have been the future of English football

Townsend's not a loan: There are plenty of players with bags of potential being farmed out to smaller clubs (Photo: Steve Bardens - The FA)

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Loan sharks posing as shirt ­sponsors has brought a whole new meaning to the cliché about teams giving 5,853 per cent.

But the biggest dorsal fins in football are Premier League clubs, farming out home-grown talent on loan because the influx of foreign players has left their English youngsters to wither on the vine.

Currently there are 81 players, nearly all of them English, on loan from Premier League clubs at lower division teams.

Somewhere among the legion of refugees there is probably another Andros Townsend, straining at the leash for a chance to mix with the favoured children in the playground.

Townsend did the rounds at nine clubs on loan before he broke into Tottenham’s first team and caught England coach Roy Hodgson’s eye. Within six weeks, he was a national hero. The loan market has become a card school where big clubs hold all the aces.

Hoover up the best English talent, block their path to first-team football with floods of imports, send them to finishing school in the provinces and, in many cases, charge the finishing school a loan fee.

At Colchester’s ­catchily-named Weston Homes Community Stadium on Saturday, Chelsea goalkeeper Sam Walker made his 104th appearance in senior football. None has been for the Blues.

Among ­Swindon’s latest colony of Tottenham castaways, central defender Grant Hall was outstanding and Aussie ­playmaker Massimo Luongo – once on loan at the County Ground before a £400,000 switch in the summer – pulled more strings than an angel’s harp.

Midfielder Ryan Mason was injured, and pocket dynamo Alex Pritchard only came off the bench for a lively cameo, but make no mistake: Swindon’s loan rangers are all valued hired hands.

Boss Mark Cooper said: “We’re not bothered where they come from as long as they can play. They have to be ­comfortable with the ball at their feet, but anything after that is a bonus.

“The three lads from Tottenham have ­integrated really well and will only get better.

“Coming to Swindon is what they had to do to get an ­opportunity. There are too many foreign players in the Premier League and the Championship blocking their development.

“People wonder why England lose 2-0 at home to Chile – well, maybe the limited chances we’re giving our own young players has something to do with it.

“There is probably another Andros Townsend out there on loan somewhere, yet to fulfil his potential, but on the other hand coming to this level often does young lads the world of good.

“We have a good rapport with Tottenham because we send these boys back to their parent club more capable of prospering in a first-team environment than when they left.

“Grant has had a bit of stick in the last couple of weeks because we’ve shipped too many goals as a team, but he’s stood up to that and reacted like a real man.

“Technically, Pritchard is fantastic. He’s a little imp around the place – people were put off in the past by his size, but he gets in pockets where he’s difficult to track.”

Townsend’s rewards for ­perseverance have inspired his colleagues on the fringes at Tottenham, and Hall admitted: “Andros is a shining example to all young players of what you can achieve if you are prepared to go out on loan, work at your game and stick at it.

“He went out to nine different clubs on loan, and it was ­probably the last one at QPR which made him, but he’s kicked on this season and set new standards.

“Sometimes in football, you need a stroke of luck to make things happen – this year he’s made the right moves at the right times, and he deserves to be where he is now.”